THE WHEELS OF STEEL ARE TURNING

[capemods]

WHO: These lucky contestants
WHERE: Various boroughs of the City, and the demon dimension.
WHEN: Tuesday, August 21st, 11:54 am and onward.
WARNINGS: This post may contain graphic depictions of violence, psychological horror, and adult themes; it will definitely contain adult language. Viewer discretion advised.
SUMMARY: Vulcanus tries to blow up a collection of buses around the City in order to incite anti-imPort rioting; Lachesis mixes things up again. see here for details.
FORMAT: Go crazy, kids.

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Each bus will have a labeled thread in the comments. To recap:

Bus W will explode. Lachesis will teleport these ImPorts to a location near the bus just after it explodes. Those who are assigned to this bus, you must be the heroes that the City demands. The damage will carve a hole in the street, and civilians are at risk for debris/fires/etc.

Bus X will yank imPorts inside of it and induce a week-long power switch. From 8/21 at 12 PM to the following Tuesday, 8/28 at 12 PM, characters will have their powers switched with another ImPort passenger. All characters on this bus have their new powers assigned.
Correction: this bus is located in Brooklyn.

Bus Y will yank imPorts inside of it for one minute, and then transport its imPorts to the demon dimension until midnight. Envision Dante's Inferno as the setting, but with the twist that ANYTHING CHARACTERS IMAGINE WILL MANIFEST IN THE WORST WAY POSSIBLE.

Bus Z will yank imPorts inside of it for one minute, and then with a LOUD SCREECHING NOISE, it will infect imPort minds with radio signals, songs, dialogue, AND IMPORTANT PLOT-RELATED INFORMATION THAT VULCANUS DOESN'T WANT YOU TO KNOW for the rest of that day. There is no way to turn this off for the entire day. ImPorts will be returned to their prior locations at the end of one minute. All characters on this bus have their unique mental broadcasts assigned.

Comments

[dragony]

She presses the heel of her palm against her eye patch, heaving a great and put-upon exhale, but rather returning fire at Karkat, she turns to shout back over her shoulder at the monstrosity: "And fat jokes are out of style!"

[crab]

"Fat jokes, no one's making any fat jokes! Is discussing what's in and out of style seriously what we should be focusing on when there's a most likely hostile Outer God looming over us?! I could list you several more prudent exploits, number one being copiously piss ourselves," Karkat shouts back at her, frantic.

[dragony]

She swings an arm wide at the abomination mere feet away from them.

"That is! And it's not even doing a good job crustaceans can't get fat rolls, that doesn't even make sense." Hands once more dismissive in the air, Ruka turns her attention away from the monster to get her purse out of the blood puddle.

Perhaps it's a mistake that Ruka turned her back on the monster, but at least the bubble does not waver when the black tendrils wrap around the bubble and pull it towards its maw.

[crab]

"What the fuck, it's making fat jokes about crustaceans!?" in the most incredulous of tones, he's so nonplussed that he almost doesn't notice at first when the horrorterror begins to slowly drag them toward one of its many gaping mouths. Fear shoots through Karkat all over again, and he curses himself for bringing this upon them. A fucking horrorterror, past self? Really?

"Ruka. Do I want to know how well this bubble will fare if ingested by a horrorterror?!" He asks her, voice verging on hysterical. "Now would be a fantastic time for you to take this seriously, really, this is literally the ideal time for us to not give a shit about bad jokes and instead give a shit about the yawning hellmaw we are quickly ascending towards, come on--"

[dragony]

"Breathe," she says, cutting him off; the glow of her arm is brighter than ever, and there's a little bit more strain visible in her face. "We'll be fine. I promise, we'll be fine."

Well... she thinks so. And it's better to sound confident and not consider fear than the alternative, isn't it? She forces a lot of weight down on her own feelings, squashing them down into tar.

She follows her own advice, forcing level, steady breaths, in and out of her nose. The sphere is rank with the stench of blood, but there's really nothing to do about that now. The tendrils around the sphere and the jaw pushing down are a dozen lines of pressure, strong enough that she can feel the strain. Not on her body, like pressure against her head or a rope around her waist, but edging ever closer to her heart.

The sphere trembles, shrinking -- an inch, three inches shaved from the diameter, four. In, out. Focus. Focus... She pulls her arms in closer to her body, smearing the different bloods against her light clothing.

"Brace yourself."

[crab]

"Oh, yeah, that absolutely reassures me, I am overflowing with relief here, the amount of relief I am expelling here is goddamn unsavory, I am just getting it everywhere and making a mess of the bubble, because you can certainly promise that while a HORRORTERROR IS FUCKING EATING US!" he shouts, panicking, and not doing a particularly good job of following Ruka's advice; he is on the verge of hyperventilating again as they are pulled into the abomination's maw.

"Oh god, oh god, oh god, Ruka, I am bracing myself, I am braced to shit, we're going to die oh my god, oh god, oh god!" The jaws close over them, and all is dark except for what illumination Ruka provides. Karkat has flipped entirely off the handle; his composure fled him the moment he arrived here, asking him to retain it is fruitless. It's already gone.

[dragony]

It is really difficult to concentrate with Karkat's extremely vocal panic attack looping in the background, but she can't really devote the attention to tell him to shut up already, either. The tight pressure around the perimeter of the sphere is constricting around Ruka's heart, shaving off centimeters and inches of their diameter.

And then, quite suddenly, the bubble shrinks to barely large enough to hold the both of them inside it; Ruka remains in its center, but the sudden decrease in space probably has the curved wall slamming into Karkat and pushing him closer to Ruka; with less surface area to cling to, the unfortunate puddle of blood drains to the bottom of the sphere, gaining significant depth.

Well, Ruka's entire outfit was already ruined anyway, might as well add in shoes to that count.

The shrink, for as much happens, occurs in less than a span of a heartbeat; the tense pressure abates, the jaw of the creature not quick enough to follow. And then, motion. Ruka brings back to mind the countless times she's practiced her archery with the bubble small enough to fit around the arrowhead, focusing on the speed it flew towards its target, and with that sudden speed the bubble flies through the creature. Between speed and energy, they blast through whatever bone and tissue this false horrorterror is made of, the glow of her arm and the bubble itself illuminating the inner atrocities as they push through.

The beast wails in pain, lacking in meaning, and its body trembles and heaves around them, until finally, finally, they breach through its skin. Escaping one hell for another, but at least the hell outside the beast has light. And isn't full of digestive fluids.

The sphere slows, and then stops, hitting the mental target Ruka was aiming for, and the sudden stop even sends her to her palms and knees. Sweat runs down her face, and her arms are trembling. The light and the sphere stay steady, but the same couldn't be said for her heart, or her gasps for breath.

[crab]

Karkat makes an extremely undignified sound when the bubble shrinks, best described as a yelp, and is violently shoved from his position on the ground to crash into Ruka's legs, now sitting in a pool of blood as opposed to a puddle. The sudden jolt aggravates his injuries which had began to trouble him as the adrenalin abated slightly. Karkat practically clutches at her legs as they fly through the creature not unlike a bullet, tearing through the creature's innards in a similar manner, babbling a mantra of oh god oh man oh god.

When they burst out the other side, the creature screeches and groans for a time, before, slowly- slowly, it begins to tip to one side. It hits the ground with a bone rattling crash, and the shrieks grow more labored, before at last silencing. Karkat's hands had instinctually jerked up to cover his ears when the atrocity began to scream, but the wails appeared not to be a psychic weapon; Karkat isn't immediately dying a horrible, painful death, at least.

Karkat didn't have much attention to spare for the horrorterror's death throes, however. Not with Ruka on the ground like that, looking as though she were on the verge of passing out. He gingerly shifts closer to her, raising a hand and letting it hover somewhere above her shoulder, unsure what to do. "You better not collapse on me like some overexerted jellygrub," he says, attempting to sound disdainful, but the concern in his voice is very clear.

[dragony]

The bubble itself seems to relax around her, expanding back to its default size now that Ruka isn't forcing its constriction, but it doesn't seem to help her at all. She's trying to calm her breathing down, out of its hyperventilation pace, closing her mouth and holding her breath for moments to try again.

With her hands in the puddle, the blood soaks and saturates the fabric of her long gloves, and climbs up the pale fabric. Like mercury in a thermometer, the red keeps moving higher. When Ruka finally catches that Karkat's talking to her, she lifts her chin to look his way, but her face is pale with weariness and splotchy red with exertion (and smears of blood; there's just so much of it). Behind Karkat and behind the red wall she can make out the figure of a man in a suit, dark cloth and pale complexion, but she can't make out any features of his face. Her head drops, shaking side to side, and she closes her good eye.

"You're safe," she says, her voice rasping and uneven. "So... it's fine."